Alethea Kontis, left, and Chris Kridler chase a storm in 2023.
Welcome! Sky Diary’s home is now here on my official site, ChrisKridler.com (the main menu is above in case you’re looking for the Chris Kridler home page, author services, books and more). I started chasing storms in 1997 and soon after that developed a website, first on America Online and then on the web. After building Sky Diary for more than twenty years in HTML, it became a bit creaky. I’ve captured the best of SkyDiary.com and transferred it to this site for a more reader-friendly experience. See the latest chase reports here on the blog and in the new index of storm chasing reports.
Cow is our loyal companion on the road.
Alethea Kontis and I are chasing in Tornado Alley this spring of 2025. In 2024, in spite of hitting a lull in a very active season, we not only photographed the Northern Lights but caught several spectacular storms. See video and images in the blog, which I update when I’m not working and writing books under my pen name. You can also view chase reports from years past listed by date and event. Read about our adventures here and on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube (please subscribe!). Thanks for all the fantastic support of our gas fund — Alethea has listed several ways to donate if you want to help us out! Anyone who sends us $10 or more will get a special signed thank-you postcard featuring an image from this year’s chase.
We’re back from Tornado Alley! This trip with my storm-chasing partner Alethea Kontis went all too quickly, even though it was two and a half weeks. I sometimes wish I had the freedom to chase for a couple of months at a time, as some chasers do, but I still have a day job (editing books) and a fun job (writing books) and …
While Alethea and I bide our time waiting for an optimum departure for the Plains for our Tornado Alley storm chase, Florida’s Space Coast has finally had some rain. It’s been ridiculously dry here, so any rain is welcome. It’s been kind of fun to have lightning to go along with it. This storm on May 9 wasn’t particularly powerful, and most of …
We desperately need rain here on Florida’s Space Coast, and our neighbors got some today. But the storms avoided our house and all our thirsty plants. I didn’t try to chase them until I saw an “electric brain” of a storm sparking offshore, so I headed out to try to snap a few photos. The thing about Florida storms is that they usually don’t …
A line of lightning storms moved through the Space Coast tonight ahead of the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket with four civilian astronauts aboard. I was surprised the weather wasn’t an issue, but the rocket went high and south in a hurry. Still, I caught some lightning in the line in my time-exposure shot of the launch. The streak went right through …
Girls Who Chase is a cool organization that aims to draw attention to women who chase storms and encourage girls to get into weather and the sciences. They also offer classes to folks who want to get into chasing. It was an honor to be featured with Alethea Kontis in their recent “Meet the Chasers” feature. We’re a rather eccentric duo in that, even …
Checking in from the Florida east coast! After getting the weakened eye of Hurricane Milton – still at Category 1 when it passed over my location on Florida’s Space Coast – I’m counting us very lucky indeed. My heart goes out to everyone with damage, from the west coast, where big Category 3 winds and storm surge hit many Florida communities we love, …
My road through publishing has been twisted since Funnel Vision, Tornado Pinball and Zap Bang. How can writers choose their happiest path? The release of Twisters this summer has me thinking a lot about fictional accounts of storm chasing—and my own writing. I’m a storm chaser, and I took the movie for what it was: big-budget entertainment. The film’s science stretches credulity, and the …
